[LMB] Tagging Kids

On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Judy R Johnson wrote:
>> NEW - JRJ>It's a tragedy, that children are not very safe nowadays; one
> wonders if they ever were, or to what extent, statistically, we just hear
> about the horrific cases through the news while formerly we were ignorant.
I think it's just that the news spends more time trying to alarm parents.
>My proposal would be to
> electronically tag the kids until age 12 and pretty much turn them loose as
> soon as they seem to have some sense.
These stats are rather old (1991):
[Stats from 1991, comments from an old post]
Age Cohort Injury Death Rate % male
per 100,000
<1 16.6 53.7
1-4 11.2 60.1
5-9 8.3 58.4
OK, an adult looking at this might think "Well, at least
they get better at avoiding risks, although males get better slower.
Things can only get better for the wee tykes."
Then puberty begins to erode the human mind.
10-14 11.4 68.6
Note that toddlers are better at assessing risk than young
adolescents and gosh, male adolescents are really bad at it.
But it gets worse.
15-19 49.7 77.1
At this point, accidental death accounts for almost
73% of deaths in that age group and once again, males are in the
slow class. Many of them may have lost their opposable thumbs at
this point and certainly the power of coherent speech as well.
[I wonder if we should not teach kids to drive well before puberty]